I’m smiling now, but I would like you to know that many nights of crying and a lot of seemingly hopeless moments have led to this. I’ve come very far, and I’d say it’s been worth it. If I’ve managed to come back after hitting rock bottom, so can you. I’m not saying that it will be easy, because it won’t be. But you can do it. I’ll tell you how I did it.

For most of my life I considered myself a housewife. I was barely 18 years old when I met my husband, and we got married and started a family soon. It was obvious that I would focus on our family rather than building my career. We had two beautiful children, a boy and a girl. I’ve never had great plans about work, I’ve always wanted to be a mother first and foremost. I believe that I’ve been a good mother and wife, I was a loyal and devoted partner to my husband. I wouldn’t say that my loyalty was duly appreciated, but more on that later, let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

When my kids became teenagers, I realized that they didn’t need me for their everyday functioning anymore. They had their own lives with their friends, programs, active social lives and increasingly little free time, which they didn’t necessarily want to spend with their family and especially their mother. So, I had to find something else to occupy myself with. I started working as an office manager at a real estate agency relatively close to where we lived. I was quick to adjust, my colleagues liked and valued me, and I enjoyed that my systems thinking and precision were finally not a burden but an asset. I worked hard and well, but I also took care of my family. Our life was going well, and it seemed that everyone was satisfied with it.

First came the hot flashes, then a rash that looked like hives. My thick and shiny hair, which I’d come to be known for, started thinning. As if that wasn’t enough, I began to gain weight, while at the same time my self-esteem plummeted. My libido decreased and my sexual interest was practically zero. What had until then been an average sex life ceased almost completely. My husband and I got into more and more fights and our relationship became tumultuous. We both became unhappy, and we started to grow apart. Of course, this didn’t happen overnight, we fought for years, sometimes with each other, other times for each other, with more or less success. There were times when the situation got a little bit better, which was due in part to the fact that my husband found comfort in other women’s arms and beds. I still don’t know exactly how many women he slept with while we were married, probably quite a few, but this isn’t really important for my story. One day he came up to me and said that he’d fallen in love with someone who he wanted to move in with and he’d soon file for divorce. I felt cheated both emotionally and physically. He betrayed me, let me go and gave up on everything we’d built up together: our life and our family. I wanted to try and make things right, but my husband wouldn’t budge. He said he’d already moved on and wanted to start a new life with somebody else.

I fell apart. My already damaged self-esteem became ever lower, I felt fat, ugly and worthless, like a hand-me-down that no one wanted anymore. Depression soon took over, which not even my friends managed to get me out of no matter how hard they tried. I barely left the apartment, I didn’t feel like organizing any programs and I lost interest in my friends’ consoling words too. I still had my job of course, but I couldn’t do that with the same enthusiasm in this period either, I only did the bare minimum. This lethargy had been going on for quite a while when one day a colleague of mine who was really close to me, Jane, told me about a women’s group she regularly met in the park when she took the dog for a walk. It was a group of middle-aged women just like us who met regularly, did yoga and talked without a hint of sadness. Although at the beginning I didn’t want to, she somehow convinced me to join them on one of our walks together.

We seemed to fit in well, so the meetings became regular, and I became part of the community without even noticing. They missed me when I didn’t go, and I found myself missing them too if I didn’t see them for a few days. We talked and laughed a lot. At first, I enjoyed that no one knew me, and they didn’t give me my friends’ endlessly repeated words of consolation and sympathy. Later, the greatest value in these new relationships became the fact that we were facing the same problems and saw the world and ourselves within it in a very similar light. As time went by my zest for life returned, which also brought new energy. I started to exercise again, we organized programs together, and I tried different types of supplements which made the symptoms of menopause bearable. Following my new friend’s advice, I tried hormone replacement therapy too by the end of menopause, and it yielded very good results. I finally returned to life, gained new momentum, and had both feet on the ground again.

I’ve done a lot to get better, but I can assure you that an indispensable part of the change was the company, which I didn’t want to give up even after I’d gotten better. On the contrary, I decided to help those women who are in a similar situation to mine. I created a closed Facebook group with the purpose of supporting women in menopause. Besides online education and communication, we meet in person every three months and organize talks with experts. I’m the moderator, I believe as a “survivor” I can do a lot for the community, and I trust that I can give something back from all the good that I got from the ladies in the park. I’ve even been toying with the idea of going back to school and studying to become a helping professional.

I know what you’re thinking: does my earlier life ever come to my mind? Am I angry with my ex-husband? Do I regret anything that happened in the past? My answer is definitely no. I don’t have any regrets, what’s more, I’m grateful for all the challenges that I got from life because I needed all that to become the person I am today. To help others and live a life in which I can be the best version of myself.